


watch you breathe in, watch you breathing out

by owlinaminor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 15x18, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27772108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: Dean shakes his head, and Castiel will remember the smile in his eyes.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32





	watch you breathe in, watch you breathing out

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to the hosts of [the queerbait podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bait-a-queerbaiting-podcast/id1472004834). maj and zoe, congratulations. either you manifested this whole thing or you're having the time of your lives and i'm here for it either way.
> 
> title from epiphany by taylor swift, obviously.

_This is how love works:_

Castiel loves him. Loves him like the wood floor, solid beneath his feet, like the grass soft beneath that. Like the jacket heavy on his shoulders, like the wings shaking somewhere out of view. Castiel looks at him, he forgets how to breathe and he remembers—what breath was, when the earth first mastered it. Some creature in an ancient ocean surfaced where the sunlight met the salt, opened, and said, _oh._ This, _this_ is how it feels, to be full.

Dean looks back. Ten years pass in an instant. Castiel’s hand on his shoulder, his weight on Castiel’s skin. The trees lining a neverending highway, growing from saplings to towering mammoths, then chopped down, cut into fuel, thrown into a furnace. Warming Castiel from the outside in. _Easy, easy._ He knows, he has always known, he thought we couldn’t say it but the way these words echo—it’s like all the oxygen in the ocean. All the stars.

_I love you._

Tears fill Castiel’s eyes, and he goes out like this: immense. The stars are in his eyes, filling and falling. Centuries pass, and he takes his last breath with Dean’s name on his lips. Still warm.

Castiel wakes up.

The smell, he notices that first. The leather, mixed with stale beer and smoke, like an exorcism passed here some seven years back. The leather seat, yes, that’s familiar, too. It sinks under him, or it has already sunk. He’s been sitting here for seven years, maybe ten.

Castiel blinks his eyes open—the light is blinding at first, rushing in like the sun rising all at once. And then he can make out shapes, colors, shadows. Clouds in the sky, trees lining the road, and the road itself, stretching into the horizon. No other cars in sight.

There’s something else, too. Castiel’s cheek is pressed against the window, the glass cold on his skin, and it’s uncomfortable. This angle for his neck is terrible, it’ll ache for days, but it’s no worse than the pounding in his head or the way his too-human heart picks up when he remembers who must be driving.

“Morning, sunshine.”

Castiel turns—nearly bangs his head on the dashboard. Dean is looking at him. Dean is—quiet, on the surface, but humming somewhere beneath. His fingers are drumming some private melody on the wheel. He’s not looking at the road, because he doesn’t need to. The road barely changes—they might be driving through a painting, or a nineteenth century novel. All this land stretching out, new for the taking.

“I thought we’d agreed not to say it,” Dean says.

His voice is low, rumbling in time with the engine, and as he looks at Castiel his skin glows, golden in the late-afternoon sun. Castiel isn’t sure how he knows it’s late afternoon, only that it is, that the sunlight is long and heavy just as he likes it. He wants to bottle this sunlight, tilt his head back and drink it like an expensive whiskey. Or maybe he just wants to keep driving. He could ask Dean to see what’s on the radio.

“But.” Dean goes on, voice still low but on the verge of cracking. “But then you did, and—I wanted you to say it again.”

Castiel closes his eyes. He takes stock of this: the engine, the leather seats, the smell of smoke, the way the sun filters in. He wraps his fingers around this, every detail, and holds it shimmering.

And then he opens his eyes and cracks a grin. “What? _I cared about the whole world because of you?”_

Dean shakes his head, and Castiel will remember the smile in his eyes.

“No. The other thing.”

“I know,” Castiel says. “Stop the car, and I’ll say it again.”

It takes Dean time to say it back.

It takes: the car lingering, her engine purring and murmuring and going soft. Castiel rolls the windows down—funny, the handle on the left always used to stick back on earth—and lets the wind roll in. It’s all long grass, maple trees, wildflowers, like they drove through fall and winter right on into next spring. Castiel goes into the backseat, and Dean goes with him. The leather is creased, warm with the sun.

Castiel goes into the backseat. Dean goes with him. They’ve always been here, one way or another—always getting closer. Dean’s hand goes to Castiel’s cheek and Castiel closes his eyes, lets his chin drop into Dean’s palm. And then it’s all warm hands, warmer lips, and something like oxygen meeting methane for the first time. Castiel spreads Dean out beneath him and tastes the sweet spring air on his skin.

They open the doors, after, and go racing through the grass. Dean trips on a root and Castiel goes down after him, finds him laughing, and when Castiel presses his face into Dean’s neck, that’s when Dean says it.

_I love you._

It’s just a whisper beneath the wind. Castiel wants him to shout it, to carve their names into the stars. But they’ll get there. They have time enough.

**Author's Note:**

> all my supernatural knowledge comes from tumblr, the two eps i was forced to watch circa 2013, and the aforementioned queerbait podcast. do not tell me if i got any canonical details wrong, i literally do not care.
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor) / [tumblr](https://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/)


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